Review: 'Baby Driver' is a thrilling full-sensory experience

Ansel Elgort plays a talented getaway driver, Baby, who works for a crime boss (Kevin Spacey). But after meeting the woman of his dreams (Lily James) he sees a chance to ditch his shady lifestyle and make a clean break.
USA TODAY

Story Highlights

“Baby Driver” may be the music-drenched story of a skillful getaway genius, but there’s no question that it’s Edgar Wright behind the wheel.

The director of “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz” and “The World’s End,” among other movies, has always placed his films in the pop-culture sweet spot, but none more than this one. At times it’s a soundtrack in search of a story, but that’s at least partly the point. Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a kid, yes, but also a getaway driver supreme.

His gimmick? Earbuds constantly jammed into his ears, an eclectic playlist (courtesy of a variety of iPods) always blaring, so that we hear what he hears. It’s the soundtrack of his head, of his life and the movie.

Baby is in service to Doc (Kevin Spacey, chewing the scenery, a well-practiced mode), a crime boss who likes to work with a different team every job — except for Baby. He’s the constant, who sits at the planning meetings for the various heists listening to music while the other bad guys scoff and doubt his sense, along with his skills.

Until Doc shuts them up. He’s the driver, that’s it. And the first scene of the movie shows why.

While the other members of the team rob a bank, Baby sits in a red Subaru — not exactly the sexiest ride out there, but this one’s bright red and tricked out – with his shades and his music. He looks cool, but also a little like he’s trying to. (That’s a bit of an issue with the movie overall; sometimes it tries too hard, and cool has to be organic. Ask Steve McQueen.)

But man, can he drive. The bank robbers burst out of the building and pile in, “Bellbottoms” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion blares and a manic chase scene follows. It’s the real thing, beautifully choreographed — just this side of unbelievable, but never crossing the line into computer-generated nonsense. Gravity still exists in this world, although Baby pushes its limits.

Wright’s idea is to grab you by the throat from the beginning and never let go. He is consistent and mostly successful in this aim.

Along the journey Baby will fall for Deborah (Lily James), a music-loving waitress in the diner Baby frequents who dreams of hitting the road “in a car I can’t afford with a plan I don’t have.” Music to Baby’s ears, so to speak, but he’s got debts to Doc he can’t yet escape.

As with so many films of this genre, Baby will have to pull off one last heist. For this one, stealing from a post office, Doc brings back a kind of all-star team of thugs: Bats (Jamie Foxx), a hot-headed head case who convinces himself before every job that he’s taking back what was stolen from him (in a post office?); Buddy (Jon Hamm), whose backstory is interesting enough to keep it quiet; and Darling (Eiza Gonzalez), Buddy’s too-young girlfriend.

Baby’s got a backstory too, that explains his ever-present music but, when you think it through, not his tremendous gift for driving.

That’s the thing, though: You are not meant to think it through. Or anything else. This is a sensory experience, not an intellectual one. This is about the thrill of the ride, of the chase, of the edge and the ever-present possibility that Baby might fall off of it.

But there’s a hint of artificiality to it. Maybe it’s an allegory, but the meaning hidden therein seems simply to be: go faster.

Nothing wrong with that. It’s not as if Wright was shooting for something deeper and missed. With “Baby Driver” he’s meant to make a chase-caper thriller that you hear and feel as much as see, and on that front, he’s certainly succeeded.